A Far Country

by Daniel Mason

  ‘Yes, it’s different,’ she snapped.

  ‘I understand,’ he said, holding up his hand. ‘I’m just asking.’

  She looked away. She realized she had shouted.

  ‘Can you tell me about the other times?’

  ‘The other times he left? Once, back home, he went to the state capital. It was for two months, and he performed there. He came back with money he made. And then here, a couple of times, he went away to the coast, to play at bars. Good bars. My cousin’s boyfriend lives there, but this time he hasn’t seen my brother.’ ‘Do you have his phone number?’ ‘Who? Manuela’s boyfriend? He works on a ship. He doesn’t have a phone number.’

  The man rubbed his eyes again. ‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘I can see where this is going. Just a couple more questions. Where are you living?’ ‘At my cousin’s.’ ‘And the address there?’ ‘It’s in the Settlements.’ ‘Do you have an address?’ She shook her head; she had forgotten the street. ‘No one uses addresses.’ ‘Any number? Number of a house, apartment?’ ‘I said there isn’t an address. There isn’t a number or an address.’ ‘What’s the name of the neighborhood?’ She paused. ‘New Eden,’ she said.

  He looked up. ‘Oh … that New Eden? Your brother … was he …’ ‘He wasn’t one of those boys.’ ‘Easy. I didn’t say he was.’ ‘It’s good they got those boys,’ she said, repeating her cousin’s words.

  ‘It is good,’ he replied, without conviction. He paused. ‘You don’t have a photo of him, do you?’ She shifted Hugo to the side and reached into her bag, where she had brought the portrait of Isaias. She handed it to the inspector. ‘He doesn’t look exactly like that. The artist, he touched it up a little.’ An amused smile played over the inspector’s lips. ‘Now I see,’ he said. ‘Was this made in the north?’ ‘No, here. The portraitist came to the hill.’ ‘It’s well done,’ said the inspector. His voice softened. ‘He really was going to be a musician, wasn’t he?’ She heard compassion in his voice, which frightened her more.

  He set the photo down. When he spoke again, he weighed his words. ‘Listen … Isabel. There are a lot of things I can tell you. The first is that we are going to file a report, and I’ll take this case myself. But I have to be honest with you. There isn’t much I can do.

  ‘We have,’ he said, picking up a pen and tapping it on the table, ‘thousands of people reported missing every year. Granted, we handle the whole state, but most cases are from here. Thousands of people in a city with ten million or twelve or fifteen, depending on where you draw your lines. And those are just the ones we hear about. I don’t want to venture how many boys in our system have your brother’s name. I’ve seen enough Isaiases to make a whole army of Isaiases. I’ve worked here twenty years, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are more ways for people to disappear than you can dream of. Most of them come home, thank God. A boy runs off with a sweetheart. A girl gets in a fight with her parents, heads into the street, decides it’s too cold and goes home. But others decide not to come back. Not saying that isn’t a problem. But disappearing isn’t a crime. Many people who disappear chose to disappear—’

  ‘Not Isaias,’ said Isabel.

  He pressed on. ‘Fair enough. But there are a lot of people who come here thinking they can be someone else. Who think of their lives back in the country and want to escape.’

  ‘He isn’t like that.’

  ‘I didn’t say he was,’ said the inspector. ‘I’m just telling you what I tell everyone. I would—’

  The door opened a crack, and the clerk put her head in. ‘Inspector? Do you have a moment? Miss S, from this morning? She’s back and acting crazy. Can you come outside and have a word with her?’

  Without finishing what he was saying, he rose and followed her out.

  Isabel waited. She watched the minute hand of a clock move slowly. Hugo had finished with the bottle, and she set it on the floor. She looked about the room, at the bare walls and the dented metal cabinets. She had to move, she thought. She had the sudden impulse to run. She could be out of the building in seconds, over the hills. She imagined herself capable of incredible speeds. She didn’t know where she would go, but it didn’t matter.

  She stood, and began to pace. ‘He is not ashamed of me,’ she said aloud, to the baby, and the thought was so painful that she forced her mind away from it and back into the room. She wondered where the inspector had gone, who Miss S was and who she was missing. On the far side of the room, above a shelf, she saw a single piece of paper tacked to the wall. She went to it. Her lips moved as she read,

  And if we are all just Severinos

  Who are equal all in life

  Then our deaths are also equal

  Just one more Severino death.

  It was an unfamiliar poem; she didn’t know if it was by the inspector or if he had copied it down from somewhere else. Below it was a box full of photos. She looked back to the door, but there was no sign of the inspector. She hiked Hugo higher on her hip. He started chewing her hair. She touched the top photo on the stack. It showed a little boy in sailor clothes. He smiled a big toothless smile and reached for someone behind the photographer.

  The next photo was a girl her age in a graduation gown, with dark black skin and long curly hair with glints of gold.

  In the next photo, a greenish Polaroid, a young woman held a baby up to the camera. He wore a hat typical of country singers. On the bottom was written, in hesitant script, Music Star.

  Isabel wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. She looked at the next photo, a boy in a soccer uniform, and then the next, a boy and girl at the beach. An inked arrow pointed to the girl, who had her fist on her hip and a sassy cant to her head.

  She looked up, her chest tight, and read the poem again. She returned to her chair, but her eyes kept dashing back to the box on the shelf. She forced her gaze away, and it settled on a folder. A girl’s name was written in black ink. She looked over her shoulder, then swiveled the folder toward her. She opened it awkwardly, pushing Hugo’s hand away as he grabbed for its corner. In the front was a photocopy of a Bulletin of Occurrence with the same questions the inspector had asked.

  PERSON REPORTING: Maria O.

  RELATIONSHIP TO DISAPPEARED: mother

  NAME OF DISAPPEARED: Eliane O.

  AGE: 17

  PROFESSION: waitress, nightclub

  SUMMARY: Mother called station, 22 July, last year, stating that the Disappeared, who had been in the city for a year, had ceased answering her phone.

  States that her daughter called once a week, prior to 22 July. Says her daughter left home state in the north to come to work with a cousin in the city. Says daughter worked in a factory in the North Zone for four months, before finding a job as a waitress at a nightclub in the Center. Thinks the job was going well. Daughter sent money home several times. Doesn’t remember the exact amount, but denies anything excessive or unusual. Very agitated by this question. Denies daughter ever reported depression, drug use. Denies daughter receiving supplementary income related to waitressing job. Nothing unusual about last conversation. Says she waited two weeks to call cousin in the city, who said that the Disappeared had moved out two months prior and was living in an apartment in the Center.

  Cousin unable to offer further information. Mother calling every day.

  Isabel turned the page. More testimony, phone numbers, police reports. She thumbed through the pages until a paper-clipped photo caught her eye: a smiling girl in a brightly colored swimsuit, laughing, holding her arms high.

  The door opened, and Isabel slammed the file shut. A second, gray-green photo slipped out and slid across the floor. In two steps, the inspector picked it up and placed it upside down on the desk. He took the file from her. ‘This isn’t yours,’ he said.

  She blurted, ‘What did that photo show?’

  The inspector began to say something and stopped. ‘Isabel.’ He took a deep breath, put his fists on the desk and leaned toward her. ‘Why are you looking for sadness?
Why do you want more sadness? Worry about your brother, but don’t go looking for more, understand?’ He placed his hand on the file. ‘This didn’t happen to your brother. It happens, yes, but not to him. There are so many people here, and most of them never see anything like this.’

  He sat. ‘Listen, it’s late. About … Isaias … I will file the report. We’ll give his name to the hospitals, the city morgue, the rest of the police department. You can get in touch with us anytime, but I advise you to be patient. If you want to look, usually we tell people to go to the big hospitals, the police precincts near your district, any place he used to go.’

  ‘By myself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘That’s it. I want to help. I’m just telling you. For the last hour I had a woman yelling at me as if I made her son disappear. No one here wants someone to be missing.’

  He sat back. She thought he would send her away, but instead he closed Isaias’s folder, removed his glasses and set them on the desk. He stared as if he were staring into the distance.

  ‘You know,’ he said suddenly. ‘Last week, in the papers, they had an article about the migrations. They said everyone’s leaving the country for the city now. They had photos of the flatbeds, people crammed together like cattle. They said whole towns have been abandoned. I knew, of course, but I hadn’t thought about it like that, like it was a story worth writing about, like it was history.’

  Isabel wrapped her arms around the baby. ‘A lot of people left my village.’

  ‘I’m not talking just about your village. I’m talking about the whole country.’ He paused. ‘The whole world.’

  She shifted nervously. Desperately, she wanted to leave.

  ‘What do you eat on the flatbeds?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you eat? I started thinking about that. They said the flatbeds don’t stop.’ ‘We bring food. Or we don’t eat.’ ‘Don’t eat? Those things take four days.’ ‘It isn’t so bad.’ She clenched her teeth. ‘Other people have it worse.’

  ‘And your parents are still in the north?’

  She nodded, her head hot.

  ‘And they’re making it through the drought?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘They say people are starving.’ ‘We’re not starving.’ ‘They say people are eating cactus.’ ‘Eating cactus is not starving,’ she said angrily, and he stared at her for a long time.

  Then he said, ‘It’s late.’ He looked much older. She stood and hoisted Hugo against her shoulder and let his sling hang loosely at her side. She kept her eyes away from the poem.

  The inspector opened the door for her and accompanied her into the elevator. Several times she thought he would say something, but he was silent. At the bottom floor, Isabel said, ‘I know the way.’ But he walked with her to the exit to the street.

  It was early evening. People were getting out of work, and the streets were crowded. She didn’t remember how she arrived, so she just walked, looking for a familiar sign. She stopped at a concrete planter to give the bottle to Hugo and watch the buses. He drank greedily. The lines were long and the buses were full. She couldn’t imagine standing for the two-hour ride home in traffic and left the stop to wander again.

  She waited for thoughts about Isaias, but nothing came. She thought maybe she would cry, but she couldn’t, so she just kept walking, and soon found herself in the square outside the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary. Inside, it was mostly empty. She sat and stared at the painted angels, the little heads floating on clouds and feathered wings. A nun had taken the saints down and set them in the front pews to clean them. Many of them were the size of children, and from where she sat, it looked as though they were praying, too. They had cordoned them off with a rope. A woman came and reached for Saint Roch, but he was too far away. She almost fell. The nun came and unlatched the rope for her. ‘Thank you,’ the woman said when she came back. ‘Look.’ She lifted her sleeve above her forearm. ‘I can’t get out of work to see a doctor, and it’s already infected. I had to see him today.’

  Isabel stayed until Hugo became restless. Then she went back to the lines for the buses. She was standing behind an old woman in a gray sweater when a piece of paper on the side of a pavilion caught her attention. It was a photo of a young boy. MISSING, it said, and gave his name and a telephone number with a distant city code. It was the first time she had seen a Missing poster, and thought, I must be noticing them only now. She stared at it for a long time, and then, farther along the street, a paper on a light post fluttered. She left the line for the bus and approached it, it said MISSING and showed the face of a girl, and a name and a number. As she looked at the girl, there came suddenly a sense of something tearing: a strange sense that seemed to have come to her from a far country, and she knew that this girl wouldn’t be found, just like she had known what would happen to her second brother in the photo taken long ago. She left the lamp, and on a wall there was a paper, it said missing and showed the face of a woman, and a note, I FORGIVE, PLEASE COME HOME, and she knew this woman would be found, but not for a very long time. Then she turned, and on a newspaper booth was another, it said MISSING and showed the face of a boy, and the words WE ARE TOO POOR TO OFFER A REWARD / YOU WILL BE THANKED BY THE GRACE OF GOD AND THE BLESSINGS OF MARY, and she realized not a single poster promised a reward, and she turned, and on a telephone pole there were three stapled papers and they each said MISSING and one had a photo of a young man and said GOES BY ‘LITTLE ANT’ and another had a photo of a woman and said SHE NEEDS HER MEDICINES, and the bottom one said nothing else, it was a grainy snapshot of a baby that looked as if it had been in the sun for some months, and Isabel knew that the young man would be found and the woman would be found and lost again and the baby would never be found. She turned, and on the back of a bench was a photo of an old man and it said MISSING and on the side of a passing bus was a photo of a girl and it said MISSING, and she stopped, and littered on the ground were torn papers and photos and fragments of words. She ran to the steps of the church and tried to catch her breath, but from behind her she heard the drone of a Hail Mary, and looked up to see a woman with signboards hung over her chest and back like a chasuble and a sign in her hand. The signboards were posted with photos of a little boy, the word, repeated, MISSING. She ranted, and Isabel ran again.

  She stopped before a bank of phones and hid inside their hoods. Suddenly, she took out a phone token, grabbed the receiver and dialed the number of the plaza phone in Saint Michael. Her fingers were shaking, and she kept pressing the wrong buttons, dialing again and again until finally the line engaged and she heard a static and a distant ringing.

  After many rings, a woman answered. ‘Hello?’ ‘It’s Isabel, it’s me, can I speak to my mother?’ ‘Hello?’ said the woman again. It sounded like her aunt. ‘It’s me! It’s Isabel!’ she shouted. ‘Hello?’ ‘It’s Isabel. Can’t you hear me? Shit phone!’ She hit it against the booth. ‘You shit shit phone!’ She shouted into the mouthpiece, ‘It’s Isabel! Please hear me!’ ‘Hello?’ said the woman, and the line went dead.

  She called again. This time, a different voice, and she recognized her father. He sounded tired. At the sound of his voice, she began to cry. ‘It’s me!’ she shouted. ‘Father, it’s me, Isabel.’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Yes! I’m here.’ She hit the phone. ‘God God God, it’s me, it’s Isabel.’ ‘Hello?’ ‘Please, hear me, you can hear me, you can hear me shouting.’ ‘Hello? Who is there?’ ‘It’s me,’ she cried. There was a long wait, and then her father said, ‘Hello, Isaias? Isaias, is that you?’

  Fog came.

  Lolling in great white tongues, the mist crept up from the sea and slunk through the city. It wrapped the spires and carpeted the hills, deadened the rattle of the buses and muted the distant music. It streamed down the narrow backstreets and blanketed the soccer pitch. Below the jacarandas, drops stained the ground like shadows.

  In Manuela’s house it crept through the window and dewed the mirror. With her finger, Isabel w
rote the letters of her name, ISABELISSABELSIBELBELISSA, until she reached the sharp edge. Then the mist filled the letters and the letters wept.

  On the hill the fog became so thick and the air so quiet that there were moments when Isabel thought she was alone. At times, she was seized by a sudden temptation to scream as loud as she could, but she couldn’t, like she couldn’t scream in dreams. And what would people think, she asked, a girl alone, screaming at the fog?

  She went down into the Center to look for her brother almost every day now, except for the weekends, when she went to wave flags. She took Hugo, with a handkerchief to cover his head. His bottle dangled from her fingers in a plastic bag.

  At first she walked without aim, a slow drifting path through neighborhoods of dry-goods shops and bustling street stalls. In the penny thrift stores, women burrowed through piles of colored clothing. Girls smoked beneath faded pink photos at the entrances to pornographic theaters. Unlit supermarkets advertised sales for boxes of rice and beans and ground manioc. The people seemed to move in whispers. When it rained, street children grabbed the bus fenders and slid on the soles of their sandals.

  She walked for as many hours as her feet could bear. She descended on the shuddering buses with the day-shifters and returned with them, or waited until night fell and took emptier buses home. She recalled Manuela’s warnings about the city at night, but she didn’t care. She set out on long winding courses or circled the same blocks until the women at the thrift stores eyed her cautiously and the girls outside the theaters winked. She lowered her head and walked faster.

  Her hands cramped with the weight of the baby. She brought the sling, but found she preferred holding him. She shifted him from arm to arm, rested him on her shoulder, crooked him in her elbow or canted her body to balance him on her waist. She knotted the handkerchief in the shape of a dog and gave it to him to play with. When he cried, she dipped the dog’s head into the formula for him to suck.

  She found a rhythm, slowly. The days washed over her as they did back home. At night, she sometimes went to watch the soap opera about the maid Cindy. She agreed with Josiane: there was no one so beautiful. She found herself floating into Cindy’s world. On some nights, she stayed awake worrying for Cindy, whose mother was in the intensive care unit, after a heart attack. They were the only thoughts that could distract her from her brother. She remembered little from the walks or how she returned.